48 THe W A YW AR.D PR.eS S N EWSP APER stories never re- peat themselves precisely; it is simply that one story is often much like another For example, a few weeks ago the local papers reported that a man beat his wife to death with his fists because she was spending all the family's money, and a week later it was duly recorded that another man beat his wife to death with his fists-but in this case it was because she would not give him a divorce. It is characteristic of our time that the main outlines of an inva- sion story have become as banal as those of a mugging murder, and most newspaper readers in the days since the North Korean crossing of the Thirty- eighth Parallel, on June 25th, must have had the sensation of having read it al1 somewhere before. The news broke on a Sunday, like the news of the Ger- man invasion of F..ussla on Sunday, June 22, 1 941, and of Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The way of the transgressor is trite, and surprise is always slightly increased by an attack during the weekend. The way of the transgressor is also helpful to the ordi- narily modest circulation of the New York Enquzrer, the weekly masquerad- ing as a daily that is dated Monday but appears on Sunday afternoon. The late city editions of the Times and the H er- aId Tribune had the Korean invasion story on this particular fateful Sunday mornIng, but neither had given it an eight-column spread, or even the best position in the paper; there was, of course, no way of knowing from the early press-association bulletins that it would develop into a bigger story than the death of fifty-eight people in an air- plane accident, which held the place of honor. The Enquirer, which received lïter United Press stuff, was the first to promote the fighting into the eight-col- umn class. And as I read an editorial in the Enquirer of five weeks later that started in bold-face type on the front page and ran over, I had an even strong- er feeling of déJà vu than I'd had the day it all began. It said: rrhe reverses which the United States has sustained in Korea are not ",-ithout precedent in our history, which shows that ,ve have a habit of meeting \vith ill fortune after we begin to wage war. But our history also proves that not- withstanding the habit in question, \ve have emerged victoriously from every \ Tar in ,vhich vV'e have engaged. The Truman Administration cannot honestly be blamed for the turn of events in Korea, in vie,"! of the pronouncedly ab- norma] condition in Vv hich the \vorld has found itself for so long and the impossi- INF ANTR.Y W Af\ AGAIN bility of our Government's providing against all contingencies amid the vast complexities of our era ThIs sounded like January, 1 942, when our habItually unprepared forces were being hammered about the Philip- pines, and people here were being ha- bitually philosophical about it. The rest of the first page of this issue of the En- quzrer was filled with war news, all from the United Press but lIvened by such headlines as "REDS PERIL T AEGU! YANK FORCE TRAPPED! " and "DEATH ORDER PRAISED BY \;V >\LKER'S MA" (Lieutenant General Walton H. Walk- er,s mother, eighty-one, approved of his order to his men to fight it out to the death), and EISENHOWER'S VIEWPOINT U.S. MUST WI IN KOREA..-"OR ELSE." The back page carried a biographical piece headed "SYNGMAK RHEE IS KOREA..'S GEORGE \;V ASHINGTON." But in the body of the paper, the En- quirer ran a second long editorial, this one demandins- justice for Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, born In Ireland, who, it said, had signed the Declaration of Inde- pendence but had never got enough credit for it. "For some reason his :;$I , , L " - , % ': ..' t l.t \. ! '\ "'5: , " 1,;:\ . ) \ r-+- ...... I - :.:> -... \ 1 ^- \ ,. " '\ .t. noble act of self-sacrifice has not re- ceived from history the recognition it de- serves," the editorial declared. Colonel John R. Stingo, the Enquzrcr's turf- and-social correspondent, writing from Saratoga, reported, "Everything points to a satisfactory season despite the omi- nous shadow of \Var with its depressive uncertainties." Colonel Stingo, who is seventy-seven, has survived a lot of un- certainties and i not going to become depressed prematurely, although, as he conceded in another part of hIs piece, "In the happy crescendo there is heard a dolorous note here and there." A horse-race tipster named A. J. Mc- Keever advertised: AMAZING-!NCREDIBLE- B'C"T TRUE! ACCLAIMED BY RACING FANS EVERYWHERE! You CAN'T WIN GUESSING Find out what the professionals are doing and string along with them. The illusion of being back where one had come from only recently was heightened by the name MacArthur, scattered through the text. It seemed to me I had caught thIS act before. T HERE have been at least fifteen sneak-punch invasions and aggres- sions since the Italians marched into Ethiopia, and they aU have a n umber of : :' 1:o_:;i 1>", . \ r } '" '" ...1 "<i,. ,..--"" /" ,-....... ';:# . , ; , .... -.. K<>'J or !9